Argent Tournament, Ulduar and Achievements: A week in Review!

Today concludes the first week of Patch 3.1 and what a busy, busy week it was! Tons of buggy instances, server instability and major lag, but for the most part this patch has proven to be filled with win.

I didn’t play much on the first day due to the servers not coming up forever. I checked out the new fishing daily and also picked up the cooking daily again. Since getting my Chef title I had stopped doing it and I’m really kicking myself for that now seeing as how there is now an Achievement to get the new Chef’s Hat (100 Dalaran Cooking Awards). I really enjoy the new fishing daily and have so far gotten 3 of the pricey vendor trash rewards (17g, 25g and 100g) but I have yet to get either of the new poles.

What has really been taking up all of my time has been the new Argent Tournament dailies! If you haven’t done these yet (SHAME!) you really should. Even if you’re not interested in the mounts, pets or titles, its extremely good money and the quests are fairly easy, taking very little time to complete them.

Lok'tar!

I’ve teamed up once again with fellow achievement-whore Hid to work on these (and lots of other Achievements, which I’ll get to later) and its probably the most fun I’ve had in the game in quite some time. You start out by Aspiring for your race’s city, completing 3 quests a day for 3 days until you then become a Challenger. Once becoming a Challenger you then complete 4 quests a day for 5 days until finally becoming a Champion for your home city. After you become a champion, you can then go through the sequence again for other cities in your faction, though you start out as a Challenger instead of an Aspirant.

All of the quests are pretty simple and easy to do. The only one that really could be annoying is where you have to compete against Valiants and Challengers and win. It can be a little challenging at first and sometimes I would get annoyed with it. However I was standing there watching Hid do his when I realized that while you can’t help someone take down an opponent on a mount, you can use your character’s abilities while unmounted and help them that way. It was much easier after we figured that out and made it take less time as well.

Yay for Titles!

Now that we’re Champions, I believe we get 4 quests a day to complete for Champion’s Seals (The currency for rewards at the Argent Tournament) and also 4 quests a day for the next faction we’re working on, but I’m not entirely sure about the last part. The quests are pretty much the same as the Challenger dailies, just requiring more kills. There is a new Daily Group quest, but it didn’t seem too hard with the two of us since I can heal.

Aside from the Daily Group Quest, all of the quests for each rank are entirely soloable, but I think it makes it more fun to have a partner, much like many other aspects of the game. So snatch someone up and give them a try if you haven’t already.

While the Argent Tournament has occupied most of my time, Hid has also dragged me along to a few other things that the patch brought with it. We successfully healed the new boss in VoA10 fairly easily (no drops for either of us -_-). The strategy is really easy, but its heavily DPS dependant. I’m not sure how well PuGs will be able to do it, but anything is possible. We also completed all of the Outlands Heroics to snag the Achievements for Outland Dungeon Master and Outland Heroic Master.

After our Achievement binge we took a break to go and farm up this adorable new mini-pet:

See?! Isn't he adorable?!

Awww I love his pretty wings! He’s super tiny, but I still really love this new pet. This little guy is farmed up in Feralas for Horde Only. When Hid suggested that we go farm for this I wasn’t exactly willing… I know that for other drop-related pets it can take hours/days/weeks (/months!) to get them to actually drop, but he had said that tons of people in his guild were getting them super-fast so we gave it a go. It took us about 20 minutes to get one for both of us. Naturally his dropped first (grrr), but I got mine really shortly afterwards. I helped Abi farm one up for his new lock-lady as well a few days later and it took about 45 minutes for him to get his. So if any of you fellow hordies have some time to waste maybe that will give you something to do!

Wow, so what else did I do this week?

Oh Yeah! Ulduar!

Now I’ll admit that I didn’t go jumping into Ulduar as soon as the patch hit. While most of my raid team was still on vacation preventing Vae Victus from going in, a lot of my friends from other guilds were tromping through there. All I heard were the horror stories of bugged mobs, laggy encounters and not to mention the difficulty of the Raid itself! I really was in no hurry at all to do it, figuring I’d wait it out until Blizz got everything working as intended.

However come Monday night, dailies were all finished, what to do… what to do. Low and Behold the guild I’ve been doing 25man Naxx with was asking me to help them out in there so I figured what the hell. We were in there for 6 hours: 180g in repairs and 32 Fish Feasts later I had 3 spankin’ new achievements in hand and an all new excitement for raiding.

They had done Flame Leviathan and Razorscale throughout the week (all of which I was invited to, but I was so busy with other things) so we attempted XT-002 Deconstructor first. It seemed like we would always get so close, but just be off a pinch. Much like the new boss in VOA, all the bosses in Ulduar seem to be DPS checks.

The one thing I love the most about this guild is how they never get discouraged. We wiped for 4 straight ours on that toe-touching robot… yet still they were excited to go back in and keep at it. It was really inspiring and dare I say… contagious. It paid off though and we got him down, sealing two achievements for that encounter alone. No Pally loot, but I was just glad to down a new boss.

We gave a go at Ignus as well, which I found to be a very fun fight also. Everthing was so chaotic on those bosses! (OMG! They’re climbing up the walls! We can’t see them! Argh!) It was really a lot of fun.

From a healing aspect, I won’t really say that I found it to be all that difficult for the most part. The trick (for pallies who are MT healing at least) is to find a nice spot in LOS of the tank, yet still giving yourself a little distance from the raid team (about 20yds). In all honesty I wouldn’t suggest using a lot of Holy Light until your tank is more geared. I just couldn’t stomach the wait of Holy Light, especially without the benefit of Infusion of Light affecting it anymore. Thats just me though, and I don’t really stack a lot of haste. Other than that I healed as normal without noticing any real change to my healing-style from the minimal changes that went through with the patch.

I want to say that Ulduar is going to be more of a push for DPS classes and I’m kind of glad for that, though I’ll admit I’ve only seen two encounters and I’m sure the later ones get more healing intensive. Either way, its definately going to be a challenge and make ever boss downing worth the effort. I’m very excited about when Vae Victus gets in there.

So that was my week! I was a busy, busy Blood Elf but I had a great time. I hope the rest of you found it to be as productive. Good luck in your endeavors in Ulduar, drops from your Fishing Bags  and against those pesky Argent Challengers!

3.1 Patch Notes: Professions and Paladins

OMGZ Its Patch Day *flails* Everyone is sitting around bored waiting for the servers to come up and I’m no different. So I read the patch notes a couple times.

Oh Patch Notes… you read them constantly, everyone posts about them, so I thought I’d post a condensed version based on things I’m excited about. It took me about 20  minutes to read through the entire list (Not counting the million times Hid distracted me from reading about the changes to Aura Mastery *shakes fist*). We’ve still got about 3 hours until the patch hits anyway, you need to read more, you junkies!

Everyone has read countless things on Ulduar and NannerShoulders wrote up an excellent guide to the Argent Tournament, so I’ll skip those. Countless posts have been made on Duel-Speccing and to be honest I don’t even really need to do it (though it gives an Achievement… those bastards!) so I won’t beat that horse any longer. I’m excited about Noble Garden as well (Woo! New Achievements!) but I can post about that later. I haven’t seen a lot on Profession changes, so I want to talk about that first… because I’m really more excited about the Fishing Daily than the new Paladin Glyphs >.>

Alchemy

• All flasks now last 1 hour. To compensate, all flask recipes will provide 2 flasks for the same material cost.
• Flasks now stack to 20, and their vendor sell prices have been reduced to lower the Auction House deposits.
• Northrend flasks will be converted to mixtures. This includes the Flask of Stoneblood, Flask of Pure Mojo, Flask of Endless Rage, and Flask of the Frost Wyrm. Mixtures can create 2 flasks of the corresponding type. This allows players who stockpiled Northrend flasks to convert them to the new system without any loss.
• You can now sometimes find Alchemist’s Caches from bosses in Ulduar. Only players with an Alchemy skill of 425 or higher can loot these secret caches.

I’m not an alchemist on my Paladin, but my little Rogue is maxed out and supplies all my flasks and pots (not that I ever use them). I think the idea of an Alchemist’s Cache is really neat though, so I’m excited for my Raiding Alchemists to get some of those.

Herbalism

• Find Herbs no longer tracks Glowcaps.
• Northrend herbs now yield more herbs on average.
• The herbalism requirement for gathering Tiger Lily has been reduced to 375.
• Lifeblood now has level requirements equal to the level required for the corresponding skill rank: Apprentice (1), Journeyman (1), Expert (10), Artisan (25), Master (40), Grand Master (55).
• You can no longer fail when Herbing.

• The time it takes to gather herbs has been reduced.

Pretty cut and dry here. I’m interested to see how fast I pick an herb now and how many drop. Looks like this made it easier to level my favorite gathering profession, but the others got similar buffs as well.

Inscription

• Added a recipe to trainers for creating a level 70 superior-quality off-hand item.
• Added a recipe for creating a different level 70 superior-quality off-hand item. Scribes will find the recipe is dropped from residents of Silverbrook.
• Added around 50 new glyph recipes. These new recipes can be obtained from Books of Glyph Mastery found as world drops on Northrend monsters. Reading a Book of Glyph Mastery randomly discovers one of the newly-added recipes.
• Glyph icons have been updated so it is easy to distinguish between classes.
• Players will now learn 3 recipes the very first time they perform Northrend Inscription Research. This does not apply to players who have already discovered recipes from Northrend Inscription Research (sorry).

Ha! The little pathetic looking (sorry) at the end of that made me laugh. Inscription is still looking pretty dull. I’m glad I have it for my over-powered Shoulder Enchant, but thats about it. The wording on how to get the new glyphs is strange, I wonder if you just have to wait for them all to drop or if you get them from research as well? I’m kinda dreading having to discover ALL of those new Glyphs also. Northrend Research is so expensive to do! I’m still wondering why they decided to not allow us to make those portable Lexicons that I was excited about…

• Applying a glyph no longer requires a Lexicon of Power. The same rules for switching between dual talent specializations now apply to switching glyphs and cannot be performed while in combat, Battlegrounds (except when Preparation is up), or Arenas (no exceptions).

..Oh.. well hmph! Honestly I think this change is kind of… well stupid. So what are all those floating books going to be used for? Maybe they’ll just be gone! Moving on to my two favorite professions (and Lae’s as well).

Cooking

• A new recipe has been added to cooking trainers for making Black Jelly, using several Borean Man ‘O War as ingredients. While it looks disgusting, it restores more health and mana than the highest level food.
• Flint and Tinder is no longer necessary for creating a campfire. You’re just that resourceful!
• Grub now sells the Dig Rat Stew recipe to players who completed the quest.
• Ingredients such as Spices, Apples, and the like have been removed from most cooking recipes.
• Players no longer need to complete the Clamlette Surprise quest to gain Artisan cooking. The quest now offers the unique recipe, Clamlette Magnifique. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Dirge Quickcleave in Gadgetzan to learn this recipe (for free).
• Prospector Khazgorm, found in Bael Modan in southern Barrens, now sells the recipe for Dig Rat Stew to the Alliance.
• Several Northrend recipes were given greater skill up ranges to make it easier to reach 450 cooking skill.
• You no longer need to learn cooking from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

Fishing

• A new (and very rare) special mount can now be caught from Northrend fishing pools.
• New fishing dailies are now offered from Marcia Chase in Dalaran City!
• Players are no longer required to do the Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme quest to gain Artisan fishing. The quest now offers a special superior-quality fishing pole instead. If you already completed the quest, you can visit Nat Pagle in Dustwallow Marsh to receive this new fishing pole.
• The time needed to catch fish has been reduced.
• You can now fish anywhere, regardless of skill. Every catch has the potential for fishing skill gains, but you are likely to catch worthless junk in areas that are too difficult for your skill.
• You can now fish in Wintergrasp, and the fishin’ is good!
• You no longer need to learn fishing from books. The trainers have finally done their reading and are able to teach you the same thing.

First of all… NEW FISHING DAILY! Wewt. They didn’t really say much about it but never fear! El’s Anglin’ was on the case as usual and I went over there to get the lowdown. That jeweled fishing pole has Paladin written all over it and oh yes… she will be mine. I really like the Bone Pole too (wow… they need a better name for that) and am kinda glad I don’t have the Kalu’ak Pole now, I always thought it was unsightly. The other rare rewards are slightly disappointing since they are just reused from the old daily, but there are a lot of new common items that I think might be cool and of course a new pet will keep all us feesh-lovers busy with this for awhile.

I’m really excited actually about the changes to fishing and I’m quite curious about this fishing pole Nat Pagle has for me. The cooking changes aren’t anything super exciting, though I am glad I saved up all my Borean Man ‘O War to use for some makeshift Mana Streudals. I think at least a few hours of my day will be spent running around to the old world vendors/quest givers to pick up those new recipes. Again, more changes to make leveling these two professions easier, no more books, no more quests. Not to mention you can fish ANYWHERE and get skillups! I wonder what they mean by worthless junk…

Speaking of worthless junk… since this is a Paladin Blog I should go ahead and list the Paladin changes, though I must admit they aren’t anything you haven’t already heard nor are they anything exciting. I know you’re coming down from your high about that Tiffany Fishing Pole, so I’ll slap the Pally Talk under a cut:

/ReadyCheck: My 3.1 CheckList

Apparently I was AFK >.>

As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to post about the last minute improvements I was straining for before the patch came out and we all skipped merrily into Ulduar. However, Blizz has shocked many and announced the release of 3.1 TOMORRROW, therefore making the entire post I worked on irrelevant lol. So this post is going to take a different turn. My plan this week was to do the following:

• Run VOA/OS for Valorous Gloves!
• PuG Naxx 25 for a few last minute upgrades.

I did manage to full clear Naxx 25 this week, with a group I ran with the previous week. I picked up my T7.5 Shoulders the first night, which are oh so smexy smexy plus I had enough emblems to also pick up my T7.5 legs and get the 4 piece bonus. I wanted to try my hand at VOA and OS before I decided to get my legs however, just in case I didn’t really need to spend the badges. I ran OS, my gloves dropped but I got outrolled. BOO! No worries still had VOA to go, bupkiss… except for the mount!!! Which I also got outrolled on by the same damn priest who got my gloves! Ah well, no worries.

Eventually I caved and got my legs because honestly what else am I gonna do with the badges? So I got those and was reveling in my golden (or Yellow as Hid teases) glory. I went back to finish that same Naxx pug and go figure THREE pairs of pally/priest/lock pants dropped. *grumbles* Oh well. I did however get the Libram of Tolerance since I was the only Paladin in the group. I’m not really sure how I feel about this Libram as Holy Light is a big enough heal as it is. Now that I have the 4-set bonus I might be able to switch out, but honestly I feel like it would only make even better at overhealing -_- I didn’t get anymore drops from that run, but the group was persistent and I picked up the Achievement for the Fall of Naxxramas: Heroic. Yay for more achievements. As I mentioned, I went with them again this week in hopes of getting a couple pieces, but it wasn’t the best night for Holy Pallies. Nothing dropped at all for me aside from the Shroud of Luminosity, which I happily won.

I have become slightly obsessed with Wow-heroes.com. Some of my good friends are ranked really high on there and I like to pretend I’m geared as good as them haha. For example, Hid’s Priest is actually the 5th best geared person on the entire server (2nd just for Priests!) and my friend from Silvermoon is ranked 3rd on that server (1st for Priests!). The last time I had looked I was rated pretty decently for only doing 10s on the regular. I thought for sure since I got some new drops I would get bumped up higher, but unfortunately I went down a few spots. I noticed that I was getting dinged for not having better enchants and the epic spell-thread so I picked those up as well. As it stands at this very moment, I am ranked 12th Horde-Side and 22nd Overall out of a list of 299 other Holy Paladins.  Not too shabby, I can live with that.

So after getting 2 more pieces of Valorous, iLvl 213 cloak and having all the best enchants this is what I’m working with:

Mega Update! and a PSA…

*blows off the small film of dust covering her WordPress Blog*

Ahem…

I suppose its been a bit since I’ve updated my blog with anything interesting. Honestly there was a bit of dullness there for awhile. I had some real life things going on (also known as the joys of being Maid of Honor in your Best Friend’s Wedding) and on top of all that there wasn’t much going on in my WoW world. I meant to set some time aside to post after Abi was featured on WowInsider and after Fulgaris called me out for not posting over on his blog. I sat for a moment thinking up a Holy Pally A-Z, but I got lazy haha and aside from that, there has been very little Pally news on MMO Champion.

Excuses aside, I decided to sit down and write. Mainly I wanted to talk about something really messed up that happened to me this evening. I was on WoW and had nothing really important to do. I randomly decided to work on some SSO rep (yeah, no idea why either) when my friend Azmo popped over to vent to chat with me while he was grinding his engineering for Arena. You see, Azmo is Rudi’s 2s partner and theyre working their way to the 2400 bracket. I finished all the SSO dailies I could do and Azmo made his shiny new Lightening Generator trinket when he decided to test it out in quick AB. Suddenly he said that he had gotten booted, I told him he was still online. Then he said that his password had been changed and he started freaking out. He tried to do a password recovery on Wow.com but no luck there seeing as how his password had already encountered too many resets recently, none of them being done by him. I kept an eye on his toon which was still in AB until suddenly it logged off and one of his alts logged in. It made me sick to my stomach to watch this happen to someone I know, not to mention someone I think of as a pretty amazing person.

I continued to keep tabs on his toon while he tried to file a ticket or do anything to get control of his account. I watched as the hacker hearthed to Dalaran, stopping at the Guild Vault and then his personal Bank before ending at the Pastry Vendor right outside the North Bank. It was horrible to watch. Luckily though (and here’s hoping) Azmo had just spent most of his gold on leveling up engineering, he had no access to his Guild’s bank and he had nothing of true value in his own bank. Most of his gear was Arena gear, also unable to be vended. The toon simply logged off and didn’t come back on, which I tried to assure Azmo was a good thing and to not worry too much.

This all happened at about 6am PST, he had another account that he logged onto to file a ticket, but the GM said he had to contact Billing. Of course, Billing didn’t open until 8am PST and he had been up all night as it was. He went to bed, unsure of the security of his toons and what to expect when he was able to sign on again. Very scary thing to witness and I can’t even imagine how he must feel. It really made me think for a moment. Luckily for Azmo, his thing is Arena and PvP, most of his valuables are safe from vending. What is this had happened to one of my Heroic-Raiding friends, a member of my raid team or (God Forbid) myself or Abi? Just earlier this week I found out that someone from my old server was hacked as well, he had at least 4 high level toons that I armoried, all of which were naked. This guy was notorious for being a prick, so I didn’t feel as bad for him, but part of me still cringed at the thought of it happening.

Moral of the story kids, protect your friggin accounts! Be wary of unfamiliar websites or addons (though Azmo had no idea what had given this to him). Whatever it was had to be a keylogger though, as it got into his email to reset his password.

*shudders*

With that aside, lets talk a little about what I’ve been up to. I’m really not even sure what all has happened since I last posted, so lets see here… I dinged 70 on my Mage and then set her aside haha. I hate leveling toons! Somewhile after that I took a week off of WoW to plan for a much needed vacation and take care of some crap around the house. I came back and kinda hesitated getting back into the swing of things. I RP’d a little on Mari and met some knew friends from another server who had just rolled on SoE to RP. They’re a good bunch of people and keep me occupied when I’m not pugging my usual 25s and one of their characters hit it off with little Mari.

As far as Laeyla goes… lets recap with  some screencaps shall we?